LinkedIn, with assistance from the Council Of Economic Advisors, recently took a look at the “data exhaust” of its over 150 million members, to get a better understanding of certain industry trends during and after the recent economic recession. With data gleaned from the partnership, LinkedIn was able to calculate the growth rates of certain industries occurring between 2007 and 2011. Here is a chart on some of what was found:

Some of the industries that saw growth were renewables (+49.2%), internet (+24.6%), online publishing (+24.3%) and e-learning (+15.9%). Some of the industries that shrunk were newspapers (-28.4%), retail (-15.5%), building materials (-14.2%) and automotive (-12.8%). As for job gains and losses per sector, employment growth was seen in the internet, hospitals and healthcare, health, wellness and fitness, oil and energy, IT and renewables industries. Job decline was experienced by the retail, construction, telecommunications, banking and automotive industries between 2007 and 2011.

Another chart describes the fluctuating sizes of different industries, correlating with the timeline of the recession:

The companies that posted the best post-recession recovery are in IT, marketing & advertising, computer software and insurance. Financial services is beginning to recover, and real estate seems to be secure in its trench. Industries like newspapers, supermarkets and telecom have continued to shrink throughout the entire recessionary timespan.

LinkedIn states-

These are fascinating and important data points that allow us to better understand the economic world, and it’s just a hint of what we can see by scouring the “data exhaust” of 150+ million LinkedIn members who share information and insights with each other. It was exciting to be able to work with the CEA on this project, and expect to see more of this from us in the future. Helping people better understand how their skills fit into the broader economic context is something that we are well-suited to do and we would like to provide more of to our members.

Obviously, LinkedIn has a unique set of data to comb through regarding employment trends. It is no wonder the CEA wanted to forge a partnership.